Three-dimensional (3-D) displays are designed to project visual information into a field and to provide a viewer with a stereoscopic perception of depth within that field. This technique can be used with, for example, a 3-D television (3-D TV) for home entertainment. Generally, 3-D displays furnish offset images that are filtered and provided separately to the left and right eyes of a viewer. In some instances, images are split by a light source and separately directed to each eye, while in other instances a viewer wears eyeglasses that filter separately offset images to each eye. Anaglyphic image techniques can be used to provide a stereoscopic 3-D effect when glasses with different lens colors (e.g., red and cyan) are used to view an image that contains two differently filtered colored images, one for each eye. Polarization can also be used to provide a stereoscopic 3-D effect by projecting offset images using differently polarized light. Glasses having differently polarized lenses for each eye are used to view the images.
Alternate-frame sequencing techniques can be used to generate two channels of offset images that are sequentially displayed (e.g., on a single display), while glasses having active shutter filters are used to filter the images from each channel separately to each eye. Active shutter glasses (active eyewear), such as Liquid Crystal Shutter (LCS) glasses, can be used with alternate-frame sequencing to provide a stereoscopic 3-D effect for a viewer. Active shutter glasses employ a lens for each eye that includes a liquid crystal layer that darkens (e.g., becomes opaque) when voltage is applied, but is otherwise substantially transparent. The glasses can be controlled via wireless communication (e.g., using Infrared (IR), Radio Frequency (RF), and so forth) from a transmitter that provides a timing signal. The timing signal instructs the glasses to alternately darken one lens and then the other in synchronization with the refresh rate of the display while the display alternates between images having different perspectives for each eye.